Someone suggested that I post this over here..... Getz /Gilberto - the recording sessions

[gmgraves]

Originally Posted by

ajay556

I have a 6 year old vinyl rig VPI Aries-> sutherland PHD phono. But my digital is the new PS audio DS DAC and transport. Yesterday i compared 45 Getz/Giberto versus my second master CD from FIM. With the new PS audio...the CD sounded very close to the vinyl.

 

There could be several things in play...

1) first a very old vinyl rig or

2) The second master CD is of very high quality recording ( i know this for sure when i compared it to 96/24 format)

 

I am contemplating getting the 192/24. But not sure if it will be better than my second master CD.

I am also contemplating, if 192 format is better than my second master CD, then old vinyl will be sold. I cannot afford to upgrade both digital and vinyl. I will just keep my digital rig as the greatest advantage for me is to make my own compilations.

 

 

Just curios anyone else going thru the same experience where digital seems to be catching up.

 

 

I have a 45 RPM LP set of Getz/Gilberto (2 discs), and although I have no way of knowing whether or not it is the same mastering as yours (I believe mine was made by "Classic" records (or perhaps not) in the late 1990s, but I don't really recall, and since I've recently moved to another state, all my vinyl is in storage and I don't have access to it to check), it certainly sounds much better than the original Verve LP, which I also own. But I also have the CD and a 24/96 download from HDTracks. The CD that I have sounds inferior to either the original LP or the 45 RPM reissue. It may be because the CD was made in the late 1980's - early days for CD, but the 24/96 LPCM Wave file from HDTracks trumps them all. It sounds like I suspect the master sounds.

 

BTW, this disc with Stan Getz and Jao Gilberto was the second disc in a series of "Bossa Nova" or Brazilian jazz recordings done by Getz in the early 1960s. I had the honor of being present at part of the recording session for the first disc which was titled "Jazz Samba" with Stan Getz and guitarist Charlie Byrd (famous for their version of

Desifinado

and

Samba de Una Nota So

).

 

The recording was made at a large church in Washington DC and as a teen, I was working for WRC radio on weekends and in the summer (yes, I knew Willard Scott before he became either famous or Ronald MacDonald). The station's Chief Engineer knew that I was interested in recording and hi-fi and heard that Verve (then a division of MGM Records) was going to record local musical celebrity. guitarist Charlie Byrd along with "some sax player!" and asked me if I'd like to go watch. The recording was made on a Friday and a Saturday in what I recall as being late January of 1962. I remember that it was cold as blazes that Saturday morning when I met the Engineer at the church (I had to hitch-hike in to D.C. from suburban Virginia for the occasion). Anyway, when I got there, the engineers were checking their equipment and the musicians were not yet there. There were four: Getz and his Sax, Byrd and his acoustic guitar, a drummer and a stand-up bass player. I do not remember their names.

 

There were, as I remember four microphones. These were a combination of Neumann U-87s and an unfamiliar, strange-looking mike that I later found out (by going and looking during the lunch break that day) was a German Schoeps RF capacitor microphone that worked by using the mike capsule as a tuned part of an RF oscillator which altered the center frequency of said oscillator at an audio rate. The power supply unit used a ratio detector (tube) to demodulate the RF leaving only the audio. I've never seen another like them.

 

The recording console was custom made (as was the norm in those days) and had only 4 or 5 mike inputs and output only two channels (multitrack had yet to become

de riguer

for "pop" recording). It's the tape recorders that I found fascinating. They were Westrex magnetic film recorders and they used magnetic 35mm film instead of tape. This stuff was reddish like the oxide tape of the day, but was on a thicker base and had perforations on both edges like a piece of motion picture film and was sprocket driven.

 

One of the recording engineers with whom I conversed told me that the recorders ran at actual film speed of 24 frames/second (90 feet/minute or approximately 18 inches per second) and were flat, within +/- 1 dB from 30 Hz to 15KHz with a signal to noise ratio of better than 70dB (this is before Dolby, remember) due to the extremely wide tracks (just under about a half an inch). This is extraordinary performance for the day, and the wide tracks not only mean better S/N but it also meant better archival quality because dropouts on such wide tracks wouldn't be so noticeable. The engineer also told me something that I wouldn't have guessed. These 35mm magnetic film recorders were built for Westrex by an Italian company in Rome!

 

I'm reasonably sure that the later Getz/Gilberto album was likewise recorded on the same 35mm equipment because it was the same team doing the recording only a few months later (in New York, this time, though, I believe). I mention all this because I suspect that the master 35mm film has a lot more information on it than records of the day (or 1/4 inch mag tape) could contain, and I suspect that whoever owns the Verve master tape library has long since transferred these magnetic films to 24-bit digital, and that they have a chance of sounding pretty spectacular!

 

George

[Gadgety]

Thank you for sharing. Great story, bringing your reader into the studio in January 1962.

 

As an aside, I've got the Stan Getz The Bossa Nova Years, The Girl From Ipanema, 4CD (Polygram, 1989, records branded with Verve). This is an outstanding collection of 51 songs. The first 7 tunes on the first disc were according to the booklet recorded Feb 13 in Pierce Hall, All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, DC, by Ed Green, so must have been those sessions you attended.

 

However, as you say the quality of the CD issue is so, so. There's a faint haze, or noise, layered in with the music that's audible on a revealing sound system. It's rather subtle, but there's no doubt it's there. I attributed it to the transfer to CD, or something that happened in the mastering. I haven't heard the LP cut, or the 24/96, but I'm thrilled to read your account of the 24/96 LPCM being of such great quality, because this music certainly deserves it.